How to learn 30 languages?

Some people manage to speak a huge number of foreign languages. How do they do it? And what can you learn from them?

The world of languages

In the sun-drenched balcony in Berlin, Tim Keeley and Daniel Krasa shoot their words with bullets at each other. At first German, then Hindi, Nepali, Polish, Croatian, Mandarin, Thai - they just start to speak the same language, as they immediately switch to the other. As a result, they use more than twenty different languages in their conversation. In the room you can find several groups that exchange tongue twisters. Other people gather in groups of three, preparing for a very difficult game - the simultaneous translation of two different languages. It sounds like a reliable recipe for a severe headache, but they look careless. A woman named Alisa says that a similar situation for them is quite normal.

Collection of polyglots

Sometimes it is difficult to learn even one foreign language. But in Berlin a Polyglot Meeting is held, which is attended by people from all over the world who own a huge number of languages, some of them quite exotic - the Manx, Klingon, Sami and even the special language of the reindeer herders of Scandinavia. A large number of those people who came to the Assembly are so-called hyperglots - they own more than ten different languages absolutely freely. Also there is one of the most experienced linguists in the world, Richard Simcott, who leads a team of polyglots from the company eModeration - he freely uses about thirty foreign languages. A person who knows one or two foreign languages will feel at this meeting is not at ease, but people here say that there is no problem in this - it's always best to learn from the best.

Charge for the brain

If you consider serious problems for the brain, then learning a foreign language will be among the most demanding. A person has a large number of memory systems, and to learn a foreign language all of them need to be activated. There is a procedural memory that programs the muscles to form the right accent, there is a declarative memory that is responsible for memorizing specific facts (at least ten thousand words, so as to get a little nearer to the fluency of speech, not to mention grammatical rules). Moreover, if you do not want to sound like a stuttering robot, these words and grammatical structures should be at the tip of your tongue in a split second, which means that they must be programmed in both explicit and implicit memory.

Fighting Dementia

However, such heavy exercises for the brain lead to wonderful results - in fact, this is the best charge for the brain that you can think of. A huge number of studies have already shown that multilingualism can positively influence attention and memory, and also creates in your brain a "cognitive reserve" that allows you to keep your brain much longer in working condition even in old age. It has already been proven that the possession of not one but two languages, as well as their constant practice, postpone the diagnosis of dementia (brain degradation, dementia) for five years. Those who quietly communicate in three languages, on average, were diagnosed 6.4 years later than monolingua. Well, polyglots, who speak more than four languages, enjoy excellent brain functionality for as long as nine years.

Becoming a Polyglot

This long-term benefit for your brain contrasts sharply with various commercial training projects that do not allow you to achieve long-term results, and if and improve brain function, then only in the short term. Until recently, however, many neurologists have argued that adults are already too old to achieve fluency in any foreign language. In accordance with the hypothesis of a critical period, there is a narrow time window in childhood, when people can easily perceive the nuances of new languages. However, recent studies show that this hypothesis is greatly exaggerated - with age between you and foreign languages does not appear a huge abyss, you just become a little more difficult to teach them. Naturally, the large number of hyperglots that attended the Assembly in Berlin learned part of the language when they were already adults. Kealy grew up in Florida, where he studied at the same school with a large number of Hispanic children. He liked tuning in to foreign radio stations, although he did not understand a word of it - for him it was like listening to music. But only in adulthood he began to travel the world and in the process to learn languages. First he moved to Colombia, where he mastered French, German and Portuguese at the university, then lived in Switzerland, Eastern Europe and Japan. Now he speaks more than twenty languages, most of which he learned as an adult, so he boldly declares that the hypothesis of a critical period is complete nonsense.

How to learn a language?

However, the main question is this: how do hyperglots manage to learn so many languages? And can other people try to achieve the same result? First, they are much more motivated than most people. Secondly, many of them constantly travel, move from place to place, on the way picking up new languages. Sometimes they simply have no choice but to learn a new language. However, even with the best intentions and incredible motivation, many people can not properly learn foreign languages. Keely at the moment is writing a book about the social, psychological and emotional factors of becoming a polyglot.

Keely, with skepticism, refers to the idea that this is a matter of intelligence - of course, he understands that analytical thinking makes learning much easier, but it's not just that. In fact, the most important thing is to be able to become "cultural chameleons". After all, learning a language is not only memorizing a set of words and grammatical structures. That is why the language is studied better and faster in a country where everyone speaks it. So here everything depends not only on motivation and intelligence, but also on the conditions in which you will learn the language.